My Refuge (Prompt Entry #2)

As many of know, or have figured out, I love Terry Tempest Williams. To say that I admire her work would be an understatement. When I saw the prompt for "this" week (this is in quotes because I am obviously writing this after the week in which is was supposed to be written) I was intimidated. All that was running through my mind was Refuge and needless to say, I was greatly intimidated. I wanted to write something that would evoke everyone who read it to say, "that sounds a lot like TTW." I thought about it all week and the more I thought about it the more I psyched myself out. There is no way I can write like TTW. She is so lyrical and wise in her writing. My tone is very conversational. Although music plays a very big part of my life, my writing lacks a definite rhythm. So, I just have to do it. Besides the fact that my grade depends on it, it is a great exercise. So... here it goes.

God's country. Isolation and a landscape of grit were just what the Mormons were looking for. A land that no one else wanted meant religious freedom and community-building without persecution. It was an environment perfectly suited for a people unafraid of what only their hands could yield. They were a people motivated by the dream of Zion. They had found their Dead Sea and the River Jordan. The Great Basin desert was familiar to them if not by sight, at least by story. Refuge--Terry Tempest Williams

My single mother moved her and her six children to Utah when I was 5 years old. It was to get away from her own battle with persecution and to make a better life for herself and her children. We were not a rich family by any means and so we spent a lot of our time in the Wasatch Mountains. Depending on which hike you wanted to go on you could be hiking within 5 minutes. It was wonderful to have mountains so close to us. They grounded me. They gave me direction. We had many picnics, parties and cookouts in these mountains. When I began driving these mountains were where I came with friends when ditching school or for a night of ghost stories. They also became my place for solace and to think.

Mormons believe that our first prophet, Joseph Smith, saw God and His son, Jesus Christ, in the Sacred Grove. It was in nature. I was raised with this belief. I was also raised with the belief of Mother Nature and of a Heavenly Mother. To me it makes sense that Heavenly Mother was there in the Sacred Grove, even if she wasn't seen. These beliefs instilled in me at such a young age made the idea of God being in nature, natural. The idea that I could be closer to God in nature was just a given.

Because God is in nature, He is in my mountains. He was there when my sister and I would go for our morning runs through the trails behind the Bountiful Temple. He was there when I learned how to cross country ski. He was there when I was walking an unknown trail by myself, lost in contemplation of whether or not Pittsburgh was where I was supposed to go to school.

He was in the creeks and the leaves. He was in the earth and flowers. He was in the roots and the rocks. He was in the Aspen and the Ponderosa Pines. He was there.

My involvement with the Mormon Church has been like the mountains that I grew up in, filled with ridges and peaks, hidden trails and shallow creek beds. Whether I am active or not, what no one seems to understand, no matter how hard I try to explain, is that just like God and Nature have always been there for me--never leaving me, I too, have never and will never leave them. I will always believe in God and I will always believe in Nature. My family doesn't understand that I can still believe in God without going to church. It is hard for them to believe that I still believe, almost as hard to believe that a 14 year old boy saw God and His Son. My mom worries that I am missing out on blessings that I would be receiving if I only would come back to church. I believe that I am blessed everyday that I get to wake up and see snow capped mountains outside of my window. I have found answers to questions when abiding in Nature, in my mountains. I have felt loved, of worth. I have felt a call to fight for Nature and her life. I am pulled to Nature and I do not think it is a coincidence. I have found my spirituality through Nature.

For The Beauty Of The Earth Hymn

For the beauty of the earth,
For the beauty of the skies,
For the love which from our birth
Over and around us lies,
Lord of all, to thee we raise
This our grateful hymn of praise.

For the beauty of each hour
Of the day and of the night,
Hill and vale, and tree and flower,
Sun and moon and stars of light,
Lord of all, to thee we raise
This our grateful hymn of praise.

For the joy of human love,
Brother, sister, parent, child,
Friends on earth, and friends above,
Pleasures pure and undefiled,
Lord of all, to thee we raise
This our grateful hymn of praise.

For each perfect gift of thine,
To our race so freely given,
Graces human and divine,
Flowers of earth and buds of heaven,
Lord of all, to thee we raise
This our grateful hymn of praise.

For thy Church which evermore
Lifteth holy hands above,
Offering up on every shore
Her pure sacrifice of love,
Lord of all, to thee we raise
This our grateful hymn of praise.